How Much Does A Google Maps Listing Cost?

Category: Local Search

Businesses targeting geographical areas benefit greatly from a listing in Google Maps or Google Places, which has morphed into Google Plus. Many businesses I have worked with have received phone calls from people saying they are “with Google” and their Google listing will expire if they don’t renew, or that they are not listed in Google at all. So how much does a Google maps listing cost? Should you reach for your credit card to pay Google $400 for a listing?

Getting listed in Google Maps is free. Any business can create their listing in Google and it will never expire. The people who claim they are “with Google” don’t really work for Google at all. (If you can get anyone on the phone from Google that’s not in their Adwords department, pat yourself on the back!). They are independent companies attempting to sell a service, but intentionally lead you to believe they are part of Google. They may have some certification from Google, such as an Adwords certified reseller, but they are separate entities.

A client of mine called me and asked if he could conference me into a call he received from somebody claiming to be “with Google”. The person on the line said my client wasn’t listed in Google Maps and he could fix that for $400. When I asked him if he worked for Google, he said he was “with Google”. I asked him again if he worked directly for Google or another company and he finally said he worked for a company other than Google.

I have received many calls from clients after they have been contacted by companies claiming to be “with Google” trying to convince them to pay up to $400 to get listed in Google, even when my clients had active Google Maps listings on the top of page 1 for their target keywords. Fortunately, my clients knew to call me before forking over their hard earned money.

If you are working with an SEO agency, a Google Maps listing should be included with a local SEO package. If you are doing it alone or don’t have the budget for organic search rankings and traffic to your website, create the listing yourself. It only takes 15 minutes. Be sure to include all the relevant contact information exactly as it appears on your website.

I trust this post has saved you some money. To get a Free SEO checkup for your website Contact Us today or call 678-520-9925.

Did you know that 90% of users search for business reviews and positive reviews help them in their purchasing decision? Not only that, negative reviews almost ensure they will never buy from you. Buying positive reviews is illegal according to US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). And most online companies have negative reviews. So how do you filter negative reviews and push more positive reviews?

Introducing our Review Widget, which will generate more positive reviews on Google and Yelp for your business. This will help not only your Local SEO, but also attract new business. The best part is, you can filter negative reviews from the back end. So if someone leaves a positive review, you request them to post the review on Google or Yelp. If the review is negative, we don’t ask them to post the review to third party sites and handle the customer in a way that it does not become a bigger issue.

This review widget on the website will look like this

Quick Features of Our Review Widget Tool

– Get genuine reviews on Google & Yelp

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– Filter negative reviews

– Absolutely FREE for our client

– Completely customizable

– Designed for mobile and tablets so users can access it from anywhere

– More reviews means improved local SEO rankings

– Improved brand reputation to help you build better relationships with your customers

Next Step: Just contact us or call 678-520-9925 to start benefitting from our Review Widget.

Have you ever wondered how many local searches per month are on Google?

The Comscore Search report for June 2012 shows Google had 11.44 billion searches. Google has said about 20% of all search is local, indicating approximately 2,280,000,000 searches in the U.S. on Google were local in nature.

Including all of the search engines and assuming the same percentage of local intent, about 20%, there were 3,424,080,000 billion searches with local intent just in June 2012. With the popularity of mobile devices, the number is growing every month. We have found 15-20% of traffic is from mobile devices, meaning there are about 684,960,000 searches are made using mobile devices each month.

To see if you would show up, Google a keyword about your product or service assuming you have never heard of your company. Try adding a local modifier, such as “dog trainer Dallas” instead of just “dog trainer” and see what the results look like.

If you cannot find you company on page 1, getting listed on Google Plus is a good first step. Create a business page and link it to your website. Depending on your niche and how competitive it is, you may need to optimize your site for the search engines and begin a link building and social media campaign to make it to page 1.

About SEOGuruAtlanta.com

SEOGuruAtlanta.com is an Atlanta SEO company helping local businesses and national brands create leadership position online to attract more visitors, more prospects and more customers to their clients websites.

Call for a free website analysis at 678-520-9925 or contact us at jeff@SEOGuruAtlanta.com.

Business owners know how vital a top ranked listing in Google Maps can be, it is literally the lifeblood of many local businesses. But many businesses are on the outside looking in wondering how they can get a Google Maps listing with a balloon next to it so local prospects can find them online. They know that if their business showed up in Maps for their target products or services (aka keywords), it would be much easier for potential customers to find them online, call and easily navigate to their place of business.

It seems the Google bots should be all knowing and they should be able to decipher all the information on your website, and sometimes that works great, but it is best to make it easy on Google… and let’s not forget Bing, a partner with both Apple and Facebook. Unfortunately, many business owners we’ve worked with commit one of the biggest mistakes when it comes to Maps which can negatively impact local search results.

So what is the biggest mistakes made by businesses hoping to be listed in Google Maps? Drum roll please… the number one mistake, that is so easily avoidable is…. Variation in business information. Google and Bing are just computers and as they scour the internet they are constantly trying to match data. When data matches, trust is increased. When data does not match, trust level decreases and you may not show up on page 1.

For example, a business might have the following variations showing on their website, local business directory and Google Places or Google Plus Local profile.

1751 Walnut Ave, Suite 125

1751 Walnut Avenue #125

1751 Walnut Avenue, Ste 125

To the human eye, we can easily decipher the address, but computers are not human and the kind of variation shown above can cause your listing to be flagged and moved down the search results page and a more trusted listing is moved up. Run a search on your business and find all the listings with variation, claim them and make all the listings consistent, including company name. Variations in the company name can also be fatal, depending on a number of factors, but let’s make it easy for the search engines. For example, the below are not necessarily the same business listing to a computer:

United Brick

United Brick Co.

United Brick Corp

United Brick Corp Inc.

Finding all listings and making them consistent is one of the easiest ways to improve your trust with the search engines and move up in the rankings, and it is the first step to getting on page 1. As you can read in a previous blog post, relevant backlinks are another critical component of establishing trust… and lets not forget social media.

Are you wondering how much does a Google Maps listing cost? Actually, they are free. And Google will never call you to sell you a Google listing, only agencies will. But getting just the listing and consistent business information updated is only the beginning. To get in the Maps listing box, sometimes called the “7 box”, can take more than adding your listing and crossing your fingers.

Online marketing has become one of the most complex and time consuming aspects of running a successful franchise system or company. The internet today is a place of great risk, where you can lose valuable time and money with the wrong strategies, but it’s also a place for the greatest opportunity.

We’ve witnessed incredible changes in how the internet is used today. For example, 73% of online activity is related to local content, and 61% of consumers trust local organic search results over paid ads. And mobile users will overtake desktop users sometime in 2014.

Google updates and changes it’s search algorithm about 500 times per year and the rate of change has increased in the last two years. Add social media and new tools, such as Google Plus, and it’s easy to see online marketing is getting more complex and requires real expertise to execute an effective strategy. While Google is still the king of search traffic, the internet has fragmented into 100’s of places where consumers can find and engage with your brand.

With the convergence of local search, mobile and social media, there is an incredible opportunity for companies that embrace it and take full advantage of tools such as Google Maps, or a threat to the existence of companies that ignore it.

Schedule a free consultation to discover what opportunities are available to grow your business. Call us today at 678-520-9925 or visit us at Contact Us today.